The Jones Apparel Group is using the VendorNet StoreNet Manager to enable e-commerce sales and automate fulfillment of e-commerce orders using bricks and mortar store inventory.

Jones Apparel Group rolled out the new platform to its Nine West stores over a six-week period this summer. It expects to have more than 500 stores across all of its brands live by the end of 2008. This will include a newly e-commerce enabled Jones New York Web site. Its other brands include Anne Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, Kasper, Bandolino, Easy Spirit and Sam & Libby.

“The implementation of VendorNet StoreNet Manager is part of Jones Apparel Group's overall strategy to fulfill sales on our e-commerce platform by optimizing our current inventory to meet online demand and deliver best-in-class customer service,” said Ron Offir, president of e-commerce for Jones Apparel Group, in a statement. The new platform is showing Web shoppers inventory across all channels and capturing demand that may have otherwise been lost, he continued.

The platform interfaces with Jones Apparel Group's order management, e-commerce and retail merchandising systems. Online orders that cannot be fulfilled from warehouse inventory are electronically transmitted to VendorNet StoreNet Manager, which routes the order to the best available store for fulfillment.

Store personnel access the orders complete with pick list, packing slip and shipping label through a VendorNet-enabled Web portal. Store personnel pick the items, and confirm the picked quantities. This triggers printing of packing slips and UPS shipping labels, and ultimately the transmission of shipping manifests to UPS notifying the carrier that packages are staged for pickup. In the event that a store is unable to fulfill an order, it is automatically allocated to the next best available store.

Upon receipt of the shipment by UPS, VendorNet StoreNet Manager obtains pick-up scans confirming carrier possession, and sends a ship transaction including tracking number back to Jones' host order management system triggering a charge to the consumer's credit card. Each night, VendorNet StoreNet Manager obtains updated store inventory counts from Jones' retail inventory management system, and transmits the aggregate item inventory counts across all stores and the warehouse to Jones' e-commerce system.